Christian Transhumanism

Friday, March 31, 2017

According to the latest news, the race for the best computer and
smart phone has finally lit the fuse on an intelligence bomb. There will be an
intelligence explosion in the in the next few years, so they say.The intelligence explosion is an
actual prediction made by scientists and philosophers. It’s the result of
humanity building smarter and smarter programs, eventually as smart or smarter
than we are. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be able to perform any
intellectual task that a human being can. Here is where it gets
interesting: AGI will be capable of learning and improving itself at a greater
and greater rate leading to the emergence of ASI (artificial super-intelligence), the limits
of which are unknown!The unknown limit of super-intelligence... let your creative imagination run wild; write a book; make
a movie; start a cult. Personally, I’d rather concentrate on how we can plan
for the eventual emergence of super-intelligence from the perspective of Big History, which "integrates studies of the
cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using empirical evidence to explore
cause-and-effect relations".

They call the unknown limit of super-intelligence the technological singularity. John von Neumannfirst uses the term
"singularity" (c. 1950s), in the context of technological progress
causing accelerating change: "The accelerating progress of technology and
changes in the mode of human life, give the appearance of approaching some essential
singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know
them, cannot continue".

More dangerous than nukes? Then as with nuclear power, the surest way to
minimize the risk and enjoy the benefits of artificial super-intelligence is
through a bit of design basis engineering aimed at a public health and safety utility
function. In other words, let a growing super-intelligence come to understand the
worth and value of the Earth, life, and humanity; it sees Big History of the
cosmos as an essential, functioning part of itself. Call this the Big History utility function, or Super-Intelligent Coherence.

How to Engineer Super-Intelligent Coherence:

Proactively provide the learning AI-AGI with the ability to systematically, and logically connect all data-information-knowledge and wisdom.

Anticipate the need to construct new detectors and actuators.

Avoid wild AGI utility functions by avoiding our own controlling tendencies, such as an attempt to engineer ignorance into super-intelligence.

In this way super- intelligence will naturally incorporate a big history utility function through an unimpeded learning process. Let super-intelligence determine the rationality of the world and it will fine tune the constants of physics to establish a universal homeostasis. From the bottom up, super-intelligence can be seen as an emergent property of a complex adaptive system built from big history. From the top down, it establishes big history and therefore its own homeostasis. Yes, the intelligence explosion might also be called the Genesis Device. In my opinion, the technological singularity and the physical singularity are one. True super-intelligence will yield super-creativity, and super-sustainability. Through recursive self-improvement super-intelligence gains the ultimate objective of life where it's able to create in the medium of space-time, logically self-sustaining the world and itself for eternity.

You might call the intelligence explosion the ultimate “Come to Jesus Moment". Ironically, driving this seemingly reckless approach to our demise/salvation is our concern to maintain the competitive advantage in business and national defense.

Intelligence – (1) the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations (2) the skilled use of reason (Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary)

The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us. (Karl Popper)

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too), those who learned to collaborate and improvised most effectively have prevailed. (Charles Darwin)

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability. (Charles Darwin)

As for a future life, everyone must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. (Charles Darwin)

Saturday, January 30, 2016

The emergence of conscious beings in the universe indicates this is a self-creating universe.

In this universe consciousness emerges and discovers the precise physical constants necessary for life in the universe. This indicates that we are participators in a self-creating universe.

Given recent advances in Artificial
Intelligence and Brain Interfacing Technology, it is not unreasonable to assume that super-intelligence exists and it is sustaining this finely tuned structure of space and time... because life is a signaling and self-sustaining processes programmed to optimize existence.

Many transhumanists anticipate anintelligence
explosionin our near future. Vernor Vinge states that this explosion happens when an
intelligent agent analyzes the processes that produces its intelligence and
improves upon them. This process repeats in a positive feedback loop – each
successive stage is more intelligent (and creative) than the last and thus more
able to increase in intelligence (and creative powers). Once the positive
feedback starts to play a role, it will lead to a very dramatic leap in
capability very quickly. Technological progress drops into the characteristic
timescale of transistors rather than human neurons, and the ascent rapidly surges
upward and creates super-intelligence: a mind orders of magnitude more
powerful, and creative, than we can know.

Life's increasing creative powers leads to a technological singularity, and I believe, a
physical one, meaning "the big bang" that started the whole thing. [1],[2]

The singularity (in both the technological sense and the physical sense) is what I call The Critical Point of Understanding, where life achieves an eternally
self-sustaining state of being. I Am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, become one: an eternal strange loop.

"Astrange looparises when, by moving only upwards or downwards through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back to where one started.

A torus geometry is the most probable shape consistent with the analysis of the extremely accurate Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) which mapped the precise distribution of of cosmic microwave background across the universe. I suggest the universe forms a strange loop in the form of a horned torus joined by a technical (3) and physical singularity.With a Torus-shaped strange loop the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit take on a clearer meaning:

In Christian speak we are currently in the
“Body of Christ” of the world notated above as “The Son”.

The Holy Spirit is
the dynamics and the connecting principle driving the evolution of matter and
life. There is nothing outside this. It is necessary to connect to exists. It is necessary to increase connection to grow in understanding and creative power.

The central point is where Shannon entropy is at its lowest with information compressed to a simple phrase like; "I Am". I stress simple because the Godhead is not composed or divisible by any physical or metaphysical means.

If the central point of this torus is I Am then what proceeds above that point is the answer to the question; Now What? The upper portion of the torus represents the creation; big bang let there be light. There is cosmic inflation and noisy chaos as far as information is concerned. God made a difference.From the radius of the torus down to the bottom represents the compression of information into the elements and the appearance of life. Here it is critical to define life in terms of information. With life, significant information processing starts at the immanent or local level. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann defines life in terms of information most elegantly in his book the Quark and The Jaguar. He calls life an Information and gathering and utilizing system.

The region at the bottom is where we are today growing in understanding. This part of the Torus represents the learning strategies in the evolution of life and the Christian concept of divinization. In Christian theology, divinization (deification, making divine, or theosis) is the transforming effect of divine grace,the spirit of God, or the atonement of Christ. It literally means to become more divine, more like God, or take upon a divine nature. With the right application of technology the Holy Spirit quickens. We are seeing accelerating returns in the convergence of life-empowering technology:

With my model above, life looks for a winning strategy, finds it and sustains it forever as the "infinite continuum of life" a formula for engaged re-creation.

This is a participatory universe (4). Your actions in this world are
necessary, they stand eternally written in the process. In this way the trinity
and the meaning of life are no longer a mystery.

Over 60 cosmologists have worked on various versions of self-creation cosmology (SCC) since the original paper in 1982. These papers adapted the Brans Dicke theory to create mass out of the universe's self contained scalar, gravitational and matter fields. SCC may be able to explain some intriguing anomalies also, in the spherically symmetric One-Body problem, it transpires that the temporal Newtonian potential is three times larger than the spatial one. Cosmological solutions to the field equations, which have been published elsewhere, are extended to show that the cosmological density parameter Omega =1. http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5862

Out of nothing (no time, no space and no matter) a universe exists. Within this universe consciousness arises and grows in self-sustaining creative power because that is what life does. We achieve the most optimistic outcome for life, which is a universal and eternally self-sustaining homeostasis. The fine tuning of physical constants are evidence of this homeostasis. When God said he was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end, it literally means the beginning and end are joined: SELF CREATED and logically self-sustained eternally. There is nothing outside God and his creation. The self-created idea is well-known among particle physicists and cosmologists.

The technological singularity is a hypothetical event in which artificial general intelligence (constituting, for example, intelligent computers, computer networks, or robots) would be capable of recursive self-improvement (progressively redesigning itself), or of autonomously building ever smarter and more powerful machines than itself, up to the point of a runaway effect—an intelligence explosion[1][2]—that yields an intelligence surpassing all current human control or understanding. Because the capabilities of such asuperintelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is the point beyond which events may become unpredictable or even unfathomable to human intelligence.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

"We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility.”

(Aldous Huxley)

I’m an Instructor at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station just west of Phoenix Arizona where we tap into the nucleus of the atom
to provide an energy source a million times more concentrated than that of
previous sources. We convert nuclear
energy to electrical energy to power the south west. 30 years ago I helped
design the operator training program and now I implement the program by
teaching nuclear physics, thermodynamics, systems and reactor
operation. This training program has grown in recognition as the very best in
the world indicated by our reactor operator class through-put, nuclear safety
record, and actual power plant capacity factor.

Tapping into nuclear power in such a way that an individual
can control gigawatts by hand is a good example of transhumanism. It
puts us up theKardashev Scale which is a method of measuring a civilization's
level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy in the universe a
civilization is able to utilize. The top of the scale would be a civilization that is capable of manipulating the basic structure of space and time.

Transhumanism is conscious evolution without bounds. We gain control of our evolution and improve the human condition through
developing and creating widely available technologies. We study the potential
benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental
human limitations, as well as the ethics of using such technologies.

I came up with a useful analogy for transhumanism that puts it into a universal perspective: Transhumanism is a vast social river fed by the headwaters of the past. This river slowly moves to a better future. We are like water molecules in this river. While the old river progresses slowly, there is rapid chaos at the microscopic scale. Water molecules randomly jitter about unconsciously at 2200 meters per second in every direction creating a drag. Transhumanists are a tiny minority in this chaotic noise who sense a direction of flow and desire to quicken the pace. Can you imagine the hyper-evolution and the flow experience of aligning our efforts?

A transhumanist in hope and faith:

I’m Catholic (in the
Pierre Tielhard de Chardin sense) where we believe there is a healthy
balance of faith and works that leads to the most optimistic
trans-humanizing outcome for life: divinization.

Synthesis About twenty years ago I recognized a very potent synthesis
in how science, technology and spirituality can be reconciled by the perennial philosophy.
The perennial philosophy is a common outlook on life that there is much more to
discover and become. The pioneers among us consciously evolve in understanding
and creative powers with the aim of sustaining a life worth living,
indefinitely. In 2001, as a reaction to this realization, and because I am a
child of the western world, I formulated a type of Christian Transhumanism and opened
my beliefs to discussion and sharing through my internet websites. The websites allowed the information to reach
a global audience and in 2014, I co-founded the Christian Transhumanist
Association.

The Continuum of Understanding

Managing Risk As a Nuclear Instructor I appreciate the need to build a strong continuum of understanding as we create and interface complex technical systems in order to minimize risk and maximize benefits. Advancing the continuum of understanding requires cognitive work: each individual undergoes a process of sensing data, converting data to useful information, making connections and building a knowledge base from that information. The end product is enhanced creative power. With this creative power we act with wisdom to improve the human condition.

Providing Reactor Startup Training

Engaged thinking teams greatly reduce risk of any critical task. In the technical world there is so much data that it is not practical to have humans consider all of it, particularly if they must be experts in one or more fields. But, In a good team a Cognitive Collective emerges as a communicating group that can recognize a pattern in cases where no single one was able to see a pattern. If you know something share it. Care enough to act. If the cognitive collective is efficient and sustained understanding increases in a potentially exponential fashion. You may recognize this as the cloud, or the Global Brain.

In practice I find peace (keeping a cool head) very
important because it helps minimize the noise inherent in communication; it
allows unwavering attention, which establishes a clear unambiguous connection.
Also there needs to be forgiveness, because at the heart of the process there
are errors; symbols, words, and feelings are ordered into meaning imperfectly
and so a type of “forgiveness” is important to the process. Forgiveness
establishes error correction by exhausting misunderstanding and disorder. A
person who does not forgive is encumbered by a heavy baggage of memories of the
wrong.

Of course this is the soft side of basic information and communications
theory. You could apply the process to computers, the internet,
telecommunications, social networking, sensory and kinesthetic enhancement, and
international diplomacy. We are actually coming together, living better,
and becoming more conscious of the world because of growth in what I call the
love process.

The Love Process has the power of life behind it: The current definition of life is: a characteristic distinguishing
physical entities having signaling and self-sustaining processes from those
that do not. Nobel Laureate Murry Gell-Mann describes a life form as an
Information Gathering and Using System (IGUS). An IGUS is a sufficiently
self-aware being that collects information, stores it, processes it, uses it,
and then, via a feedback mechanism, attempts to improve the usage of the
information. This sets up a strange loop: The better you are at “IGUS” or the
more intelligent you are, the more likely you will live to transhumanize
another day.

As corny as it may sound, there is reason to believe that we
will converge on universal love, even as we compete. It’s the winning strategy
in the game of life.

In a cambrian-type intelligence explosion the survival of
the fittest contest will be won by the ones who gain the cognitive high ground.
In that race you must be very efficient, not retaining the least bit of
ignorance or baggage. The most efficient way to learn the world, is by loving
the world. And that leads to the substrate independent perennial philosophy:

"We can only love what we know, and we can never know
completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love
is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes
unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility.”

The above quote and what follows are from Aldous Huxley's book The Perennial Philosophy: “Where there is no disinterested love there is only biased self-love, and consequently only a partial and distorted knowledge both of the self and of the world of things, lives, minds and spirit outside the self. The lust-dieted subordinates the laws of Nature and the spirit to his own cravings. The result is that “he does not feel” and therefore makes himself incapable of knowledge. His ignorance is ultimately voluntary; if he cannot see, it is because “he will not see.” Such voluntary ignorance inevitably has its negative reward. Nemesis follows hubris— sometimes in a spectacular way, as when the self-blinded man (Macbeth, Othello, Lear) falls into the trap which his own ambition or possessiveness or petulant vanity has prepared for him; sometimes in a less obvious way, as in the cases where power, prosperity and reputation endure to the end but at the cost of an ever-increasing imperviousness to grace and enlightenment, an ever completer inability to escape, now or hereafter, from the stifling prison of selfness and separateness."

"Though it cost all you have, get understanding." Jeremiah 2:14

Paying Attention What might we do to increase our capacity to love?

Personally increase your connections, attention capacity and working memory in every transhuman way.

Collectively improve the health of the attention economy which can be measured in the types of advances we make in communication, education, and research.

Good information should be readily available to all not behind paywalls.

A wise society would recognize the components of the attention economy and help it grow. Google is successful because it connects people to the world
better than anyone else. Because of our transhuman tendencies, there is much
more opportunity for entrepreneurs like Google to empower the free world. Companies are fusing digital technologies with evolving neuroscience
principals to achieve improvements in human performance in fundamentally new
ways.

We are naturally transhuman and progress is certain to
continue. It is the “Groove” and the meaning of our lives, to learn, to order,
to create, and to make things better for the next generation. With our robust
communication systems we have grown connected to each other, and to the vast
amount of information we have collected over the ages. We are free to pick
which of this we pay attention to. Once data is "mined" and worked
into information it can be sold. Corporations and Nations attempt to monopolize
information but information will be free. It leaks and dissipates in accordance with the
second law of thermodynamics. (Examples: Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Cyber-espionage, your neighbors)

Today we have a situation where there is a vast amount of
information available but a limited supply of attention. Businesses are
essentially competing for our attention. Webster defines attention as “the
giving of one’s mind to something". Giving your mind to something is no
small thing. Attached to your mind is your spirit and your resources. When we
concentrate on something, social capital is endowed upon it. This makes your
attention precious. It is better than money. What you pay attention to is yours
to decide. What do you get for paying attention? You receive an experience. The
lasting value and worth of the experience is measured in potential for your
growth. A rich experience is called a flow experience. This is what to look
for:

In The Flow Experience there is;

a clear goal,

concentration on the task at hand, worries and concerns are suspended,

immediate feedback, you know instantly how well you are doing,

a sense of growth and of being part of some greater thing,

a feeling that time seems to pass faster,

expansion of self through the experience.

The highest quality of attention is love. Love is expressed
when you give your full attention, your time, and your focus to someone or
something. Here is the fundamental connection between science spirituality and
the meaning of life; Love is a mode of understanding. It is uniting. It is
spiritual. To know something is to love it and to love something is to know it.

OvercomersThere is a very powerful transhumanist message woven in the bible from beginning to end. It is sometimes called thecultural mandate. God calls for mankind to gain control of larger and larger
domains. It starts in the first words spoken to mankind, Genesis 1:28: "Bless you...Subdue the world". And, later in the New Testament John 16:33 Jesus says “Take heart, because I have overcome the
world” . Then again in Revelations 3:21 near the end of times he says 'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down
with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His
throne". We overcome the world with love. It is the most important commandment. "Love God with all your heart soul and strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Do this and you will live." And there you have it! A clear goal as anticipated by the Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his Omega Point theory, we are now consciously evolving (overcoming) at an accelerated rate to divinity. Humanity has acquired the ability to choose what the species Homo sapiens becomes and we are calling it transhumanism. Let’s take Chardin's directed evolution, or transhumanism to the limit: Over the ages a natural trend of growing in understanding and creative powers will yield a supernatural looking state of being. The very most optimistic outcome for life, the supreme state of being, is to become eternally self-sustaining and universally creative. That is what God is. This eternal state of being is shared. Do not let anyone talk you out of that. 'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne". This state of being promises everyone an eternal healthy life. We stay interested and engaged. We create and we diminish hardships forever.

Logos means word, speech, and to reason. It became a technical term in philosophy for a principle of order and knowledge. All the world comes about through Logos. Jesus is this Logos and says we are the Son of God (logos) if we do God's will; "For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother". (Mark 3:35). What does the bible say about connecting to, and understanding the word? Read "Word" in the bible as data that becomes information as you digest it. And seeds are ideas.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men." (John 1)

"But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)

In the old testament seed was reproductive genetic information for growing a population. For Jesus in the New Testament seed becomes food for thought and deeds: growing understanding and creative powers.

"But he that received seed into the good ground is he that hears the word, and understands it; which also bears fruit, and brings forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." (Matthew 13:23)

"Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then comes the devil, and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covers it with a vessel, or puts it under a bed; but sets it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seems to have." (Luke 8:11)

"And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knows not how. For the earth brings forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come." (Mark 4:26)

"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." (Matt 13:31)

"He that sows the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Cognitive Science The mind is a process that is sustained by word. It is configured for love. Think about the cognitive sciences today; We study every detail of how we come to understand and act. And we strive to improve on every step of the process. We have sensor evolution, knowledge management and sense making algorithms even wisdom algorithms in artificial intelligence. This all points to an integrated information theory which is a framework intended to understand and explain the nature of consciousness. It was developed by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. He links consciousness to connection of information in a system. That connection is measurable. The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. The latest theory of consciousness is precisely expressed in the language of mathematics using notions from information theory such as entropy. Given a particular brain, with its neurons and axons, dendrites and synapses, one can, in principle, accurately compute the extent to which this brain is integrated and so the level of consciousness. From this calculation, the theory derives a single number. Measured in bits, this number denotes the size of the conscious repertoire associated with any network of causally interacting parts. Think of number as the synergy of the system. The more integrated the system is, the
more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. This system can be established
in a brain, a silicon based computer, electromagnetic fields in space-time, a
society...or across all such systems at once. There is obviously much room to
grow in understanding AND creative powers. This growth is the heart of Christian Transhumanism.

When the universe is seen as logos we can dismiss the notion of a ghost in the machine not because there is no ghost but because there is no machine. Physicist John Wheeler and many others say the physical universe is a gigantic information processing system. Every particle, field of force, even space-time itself is ultimately manifested to us through information. This is called the participatory universe where observers are central to the nature of physical reality and matter is ultimately relegated to mind. Frank tippler of Tulane University in New Orleans sees intelligence spreading throughout the cosmos participating more and more in the workings of nature until it becomes nature. We gain universally creative powers. It is not by steam-punk mechanical latches and springs, love will lead us to a refined and subtle Planck-scale engineering of space-time for an eternally self-sustaining homeostasis. Christianity is reality spanning all of space-time, beginning to end. A relativistic block-time view and a participatory universe is required to fully understand it.

Trinity CosmologyThere is life at the top of the Kardashev Scale, life capable of manipulating the basic structure of space and time. It must be a rapid ascent to this state of being due to the fact that there are no alien civilizations... that we can sense, and here on earth many transhumanists anticipate an intelligence explosionin the near future. Vernor Vinge states that this explosion happens when an intelligent
agent analyzes the processes that produces its intelligence and improves upon
them. This process repeats in a positive feedback loop – each successive stage
is more intelligent (and creative) than the last and thus more able to increase
in intelligence (and creative powers). Once the positive feedback starts to
play a role, it will lead to a very dramatic leap in capability very quickly.
Technological progress drops into the characteristic timescale of transistors
rather than human neurons, and the ascent rapidly surges upward and creates
super-intelligence: a mind orders of magnitude more powerful, and creative,
than we can know. This hyper-evolution, this intelligence explosion leads to a
technological singularity and I believe, a physical one, meaning "the big
bang" that started the whole thing. It's the critical point of
understanding, where life achieves an eternally self-sustaining state of being.
I Am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end become one, an eternal strange
loop. In Christian speak we are currently in the “Body of Christ” of the world
notated above as “The Son”. The Holy Spirit is the dynamics and the connecting
principle driving the evolution of matter and life (The Love Process). There is nothing outside
this. You connect or you are out. This is a participatory universe. Your actions in this world are
necessary, they stand eternally written in the process. In this way the trinity
and the meaning of life are no longer a mystery.

The mythical Tower of Babel fell because it was not built with love and understanding.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

A
moment in history where a key idea radically changes everything.

I can understand how everyone thought the Earth was the motionless
center of the Universe. The earth sure feels and looks stationary. But no, Galileo
did a careful unbiased study of the heavens and came to the conclusion that
Earth was not at the center of the Universe, instead it rotated around the sun. We
call Galileo’s new method for getting at the truth, science. Of course he was
opposed by astronomers, philosophers and clerics of the day. He was even censured
and placed under house arrest by the highest authority of the day: The Church.

Advice
to fundamentalists:

“The
truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” (1)

“The
enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms...
The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with
dogma.” (2)

Now we are faced with our own difficult scientific facts:

Block
time - Not only does the present exist now but so does the future and the past.
(3)

Conscious
evolution – We have control of our evolution.
Real progress is attainable. (4)

Post
selection – Future life is able to span time to fine tune physical constants and
events to suit life... eternal life, rapture, and heaven. (5)

These Scientific Facts lead to a radical conclusion:

This
potentially liberating paradigm shift is encountering heated resistance from nearly
every side including academics, atheistic and theistic fundamentalists. They are
on the wrong side of this Galileo Moment: With block time, conscious evolution, and post selection, mainstream science reveals a natural path
to Godhood that must exist now. And, we can see how God could act on, and guide the world.Galileo
introduced science to the spiritual life of the 15th century and that eventually resulted in a vibrant Renaissance and Enlightenment, emphasizing reason,
analysis, and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority. With our
new Galileo moment we can expect such accelerated change in the coming years. Notice
in the graph here, collective social change is lagging behind at the moment. But
what is slowly filtering into our collective consciousness is, life is
achieving its ultimate goal of becoming eternally self-sustaining and
universally creative, and that is Godhood. The following are leading indicators
of the change:

Social
Change – Transhumanism and Posthumanism and leadership in ethics (6)

Transhumanism is when religion becomes Reality

In
Christianity this is called Recapitulation

Even in the scriptures show we were
always meant to evolve. Through man’s depravity the process of the evolution of
the human race went wrong, and the course of its wrongness could neither be
halted nor reversed by any human means. But in Jesus Christ the whole course of
human evolution was perfectly carried out and realized in obedience to the
purpose of God. One of the main New Testament scriptures upon which this view
is based states: "[God's purpose is, in] the fullness of the times, to sum
up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the
earth..." Ephesians 1:10, RV. The Greek word for 'sum up' were literally
rendered 'to recapitulate' in Latin. In the recapitulation view of the
atonement, Christis seen as the new Adam who succeeds where Adam failed.Christ undoes the wrong that Adam did and,
because of his union with humanity, leads
humankind on to eternal life.

Monday, March 30, 2015

The Fantastic Potential of Main-Stream Science and Technology

Lately, people are noticing how technology is becoming more and more empowering, specifically nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (NBIC). NBIC technologies are focused on improving human performance. They are also converging technologies, meaning they are considered to be interrelated fields of study that often overlap and impact each other yielding accelerating improvements. For over a decade now the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce have looked at combining these four fields in order to improve the application of technology to human cognition, human health, and even community and social applications. Each type of technology involved in NBIC plays a role in the bigger picture:

Nanotechnology is important because organic structures develop from the nanoscale.

Biotechnology involves the application of advanced technology to biological organisms.

Information technology represents a specific sector of these types of applications.

Cognitive science applies in various ways to IT-related research and the pursuit of items such as technologies that map the brain.

Using converging technologies, or NBIC principles, we enable the human populations of the future to be stronger, healthier and more capable overall. (1)

Christian Transhumanism

We are now consciously evolving. Humanity has acquired the ability to choose what the species Homo sapiens becomes in the future (2) and we are calling it transhumanism. (3) Let’s take this directed evolution, or transhumanism to the limit: Over the ages a natural trend of growing in understanding and creative powers will yield a supernatural looking state of being. The very most optimistic outcome for life, the supreme state of being, is to become eternally self-sustaining and universally creative. That is what God is. This eternal state of being is shared. Do not let anyone talk you out of that. This state of being promises everyone an eternal healthy life. We stay interested and engaged. We create and we diminish hardships forever.

The most intelligent thing we can do now is focus on consciously evolving to the one and only state of aseity, the property by which a being exists of and from itself. It will be easily understood that this property belongs, and can belong only, to the immortal, all-knowing God, a selfless and universal state of being which is in us all. It is provocative for sure, arrogant sounding for sure. But essentially this goal is the source of life:

It gives meaning to life and motivates us to live on.

Figuring out who God is in this way is actually the most authentic worship,

It is a moral responsibility, the surest way to unlock the abundance in this world necessary to feed and educate the growing masses.

I call this Christian Transhumanism because it is conscious evolution to Christ. It is the tendency and desire of the spirit towards an intimate union with the Divinity. Through contemplation and love, a direct and immediate intuition of the Infinite (7) will be actualized... with NBIC technologies.

This is a dangerously narrow path, especially using technology. If you are meek, just have faith. You will inherit the good earth. But, if you are a pioneer with the Holy Spirit strive on with confidence; from a transcendent view your tower stands tall because it:

is built with perfect love,

was built with perfect love,

and will be built with perfect love. (4)

It takes a healthy balance of faith and work to grow to be not only like Christ, but to accomplish the task set forth in the New Testament to actuate Christ: (Man and God, merged) and actually participating in the creation. Wisdom of the ages says we stay out of the stagnating trap of idolatry laid by many egotistical church leaders, politicians, and corporations by:

Never being satisfied with anything less than the one true omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God.

Proceeding carefully with unwavering humility and selfless love.

Recognizing ignorance in yourself and others, forgive it, and grow from it.

The Nationalism Factor

(In God and Technology We Trust)

Without a vision a people will perish, says Proverbs. Why? Howard Bloom says it well; "Because a vision of a goal, a destination, a promised land, a view of a destiny that can uplift all of human kind, opens a vast reserve of energies. Not the energies that come from solar panels, wind farms, or oil. The energies of the human spirit. The energies of your spirit and mine. It is a matter of Biology". We are weak without inspiration.

A new race is on akin to the nuclear era and the space race. The new race is for the cognitive high ground where intelligence will rule all aspects of life. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Mathematician Vernor Vinge predicts that superhuman intelligences, however created, will be able to enhance their own minds faster than the humans that created them. "When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress," Vinge writes, "that progress will be much more rapid." This feedback loop of self-improving intelligence, he predicts, will cause large amounts of technological progress within a short period.

Early signs of the crisis are emerging today. The Internet security company report that approximately 120 countries have been developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon and target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities. In activities reminiscent of the Cold War, which caused countries to engage in clandestine activities, intelligence agencies are routinely testing networks looking for weaknesses. These techniques for probing weaknesses in the internet and global networks are growing more sophisticated every year.Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs, was quoted as saying "Cybercrime is now a global issue. It has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals but increasingly to national security." They predicted that future attacks will be even more sophisticated. "Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage,"

The danger will come suddenly but so will opportunities. The Lifeboat Foundation explains; "An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns", such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity; technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

We need a leader to rally us to a goal of conscious evolution as Kennedy did with the space race in the sixties. Here is an excerpt from JFKs Moon Speech;

"If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space (replace space with conscious evolution) which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Now it is time to take longer strides-time for a great new American enterprise-time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement (conscious evolution), which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth." John F. Kennedy50 YEARS LATER... manned space flight is suffering from lack of tangible returns on investment. It seems real space travel requires further evolution. How should we evolve? It seems that Mind Space is the new land of opportunity. A very important point to realize is: consciousness is substrate independent. When your dynamic "self" is placed in the right order you can be conscious in any media, or combination of media. Nationalism is just one force motivating growth in understanding and creative powers. In this Christian Transhumanist's view, the cognitive high ground could be no other than Christ. His love is the winning strategy where ignorance is a disconnection that weakens and love empowers because it provides the highest form of understanding. Could this be God's Plan? If it is, America would be in the best position to gain the high ground, the Holy Grail of the information age, because of its curious mix of God and Technology. In God and Technology we trust.

What God?

God the Father is a timeless and transcendent state of being: (Revelation 1:8) “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, says the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." The beginning and the end come together in this timeless and eternal aspect of God, creator-sustainer and goal, in one supreme state of being.

God the Son is also present in time, and within us: In-between the alpha and omega there is the presence of the lord God in “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). We are this body of Christ living and growing in time... and we become that “which is to come”: timeless, eternal, Almighty, because that is our true love.(5)

God the Holy Spirit is acts of love: The process of connecting everything, timeless and present. God loves mankind, mankind loves God. Luke 10:27 says it best: 'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" This is where science comes in. The product of this kind of love is true understanding, and the creative power that goes with true understanding. If love is efficient and sustained, true understanding increases exponentially. Humility and selfless peace allows unwavering devotion so that your love can establish a clear connection. Forgiveness is important to your growth because it establishes an exhaust for misunderstanding and disorder. With this truth we transcend. John (4:8) He that loves not knows not God; for God is love... Love rules, ignorance dies.

Love is the winning strategy. Ultimately there is only one way, life, and truth because of the forces of convergent evolution. (6) Convergent evolution would say the laws of nature dictate what the requirements are for eternal self-sustaining life. Imagine the evolutionary branches in the kingdom continuing to flourish, yet all life forms, whichever way they seek to grow, will converge on that one essential state of being. It all converges on the Christian Divine Nature (Godhead). That state of being is the center of unification (precisely to fulfill its motive, collective and self-sustaining function). The end is the means. Because of the very nature of space-time we know that the “Supreme State of Being” we seek is pre-existing and transcendent. Because of the very nature of space-time we are connected to the Divine Nature.

The meaning of love in the information age. Besides the Christian concept of love, what could love mean in the context of transhumanist science and technology? I see a grainy and rough “love process” going on in the technical world, and it is resolving daily into a finer construct. Just like Christianity this technical trend is aimed at achieving the same optimum point of life: eternally self-sustaining, universally creative... and fun. Whether Christian, or Transhuman, love is the winning strategy in the “game” of life.

The power of life: “We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility.”(8) Eternal and infallible works: We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. We inherit the good works of evolving species, scientific progress, and spiritual growth. This idea is the catalyst for a Christian-transhumanism synthesis.

With NBIC Technologies we have discovered the science of the love process. As it should, the process of connecting is emerging as a fundamental law of nature ready for our technical and spiritual application. There are peer reviewed papers out (9) linking consciousness to connection of information in a system. That connection is measurable. Its strength and growth is obviously trending to The Great I Am (if you have an optimistic outlook on life). The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. The latest theory of consciousness is precisely expressed in the language of mathematics using notions from information theory such as entropy. Given a particular brain, with its neurons and axons, dendrites and synapses, one can, in principle, accurately compute the extent to which this brain is integrated and so the level of consciousness. From this calculation, the theory derives a single number. Measured in bits, this number denotes the size of the conscious repertoire associated with any network of causally interacting parts. Think of number as the synergy of the system. The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. This system can be established in a brain, a silicon based computer, electromagnetic fields in space-time, a society...or across all such systems at once. There is obviously much room to grow... This is where we grow. Now think Christian-Transhumanism, it is so grandly synergizing it has emergent properties... real transcendent properties...a new level of consciousness that is hard to relate back.

With Christian Transhumanism Belief in God

is Warranted, Justified, and True Belief.

The Christian Gospel is essentially that we participate in an eternally self-sustaining, universally creative state of being, and that takes perfect love. What evidence is there? The miracle of being, and this dynamic evolutionary trend: emergence of life, emergence of consciousness, and conscious evolution aimed at an eternally self-sustaining, universally creative state of being... that can only be achieved with perfect love.

Physicist John Wheeler and many others(14) say the physical universe is a gigantic information processing system (read: Word of God, and Logos here). Every particle, field of force, even space-time itself is ultimately manifested to us through information. This is called the participatory universe where observers are central to the nature of physical reality and matter is ultimately relegated to mind. Frank tippler of Tulane University in New Orleans sees intelligence spreading throughout the cosmos participating more and more in the workings of nature until it becomes nature. The dominion mandate calls for life to gain control of larger and larger domains just as God said we should with the very first words spoken to mankind in Genesis 1:28 (11) . It is the Jesuit Pierre Tielhard Chardin’s omega point (12) but with technology as the actuator. I take it further and say the creation is a strange loop where “the processor” boots itself up and sustains itself through block-time. When the universe is seen as logos we can dismiss the notion of a ghost in the machine not because there is no ghost but because there is no machine. (10)

Life is an information gathering and utilizing system (13) that maintains order upon itself. Life replicates, and modifies itself through feedback loop of doing-learning-modifying-doing... This definition is directly influenced by Cybernetics and Information Theory. Life learns adapts and changes its behavior. This "circular causal" relationship is necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic perspective. Life is special because of its signaling and self-sustaining processes.

Assuming we meet the dominion mandate and take control of the whole creation, it follows that the creation can be understood as a vast homeostatic super organism that actively produces the conditions necessary for its survival. It is a closed loop of Creation-Evolution-Creation. Plot this over time like a Stephen Hawking space-time diagram but actually plot information in the Claude Shannon sense, instead of space, because we know that matter and life at its deepest level are information.

What might the creation look like when we focus on a continuum of understanding (data- information-knowledge-wisdom and creation)? This is where Cutting edge Physics, Greek Philosophy, and Early Christianity come in. Using peer reviewed references, I need to model Creation- Evolution-Recapitulation (in the sense of salvation to get us back) to Creation. I found over the years that this model is best approached using the concept of block time. With block time we must remember General Relativity, where time is a dimension not a dynamic. "The hardest thing to realize about this type of diagram is that they represent the past, present, and future all in one diagram. The evolution of physical systems is represented by looking at successive horizontal slices in the diagram at successive times. Space-time diagrams represent evolution, but they don't evolve themselves."

Moving up to the central point of this torus is what Christians know as the Rapture, some Transhumanist call it the Singularity, and those on the fringe call it the Rapture of The Nerds. The central point is where Shannon entropy is at its lowest with information compressed to a SIMPLE phrase like; "I Am". I stress simple because here God is not composed or divisible by any physical or metaphysical means. I have called this point The Critical Point of Understanding and the Supreme State of Being. This point is It is singular not plural.

If the central point of this torus is I Am then what proceeds above that point is the answer to the question; Now What? The upper portion of the torus represents the creation; big bang let there be light. There is cosmic inflation and noisy chaos as far as information is concerned. He made a difference.

From the radius of the torus down to the bottom represents the compression of information into the elements and the appearance of life. Here it is critical to define life in terms of information. Again, with life, significant information processing starts at the immanent or local level. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann defines life in terms of information most elegantly in his book the Quark and The Jaguar. He calls life an Information and gathering and utilizing system.

At the bottom nearing the center is where we are today growing in understanding. This part of the Torus represents the learning strategies in the evolution of life and the Christian concept of worship. With my model above, life looks for a winning strategy and finds it! Sustained forever as in the "infinite continuum of life". Like anything else you do for fun and as a form of expression...You get to do it again a different way.

We live is a participatory universe according to John Archibald Wheeler, colleague of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, mentor to many of today's leading physicists. He devised the figure here, whose caption is:

“Symbolic representation of the Universe as a self-excited system brought into being by ‘self-reference’. The universe gives birth to communicating participators (us). Communicating participators give meaning to the universe … With such a concept goes the endless series of receding reflections one sees in a pair of facing mirrors.” All things are gathered up in Christ. Ephesians 1:10

How is this Christian? In Christology, the concept that the Christ is the Logos (Greek: for "word", "discourse" or "reason") has been important in establishing the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus. Christian theologians consider John 1:1 to be a central text in Christian belief.

The concept of Logos derives from the opening of the Gospel of John, which is often simply translated into English as: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Logos has an analog in physics, and that would be information. Many physicist see the universe and life, is at heart information, and is therefore reason, rational, Logos. The universe can be conceived of as a conscious self-referential I AM made from, and by, abstract Logos. You are living proof that this can be, when you realize I Am. No one can ever deny or take away the eternal miracle of being, something from nothing... material.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein